To our knowledge, sucrose transport has not been studied in detail in mosses. Yet, sucrose can be used in media for axenic culture of mosses. For many higher plants, sucrose is the dominant form for sugar translocation. Sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose [α-
d-glucopyranosyl-(1

↔

2)-β-
d-fructofuranoside] has a low viscosity even at high concentrations (soluble to several molar), has no reducing end, and is thus considered more inert than glucose, the major transport form in animals. Sucrose is produced in the mesophyll cells of plant leaves (as well as other organs) by the combined activity of sucrose phosphate synthase and sucrose phosphate phosphatase or by sucrose synthase. Sucrose is exported into the cell wall space by SWEET sucrose uniporters (Chen et al.,
2012) (Giaquinta,
1983). Extracellular sucrose is then loaded into the long distance transport system of higher plants, the phloem, with the help of secondary active transporters in the membrane of the sieve element companion cell complex. The first sucrose transporter gene SUT1 was identified by expression cloning from spinach and potato leaf cDNA libraries in an engineered yeast strain (Riesmeier et al.,
1992,
1993). Interestingly, the sucrose transporter also mediates transport of the disaccharide maltose and a variety of glucosides (Sivitz et al.,
2005). SUT1 has an affinity for sucrose in the low micromolar range (around 1

mM). SUT1 is essential for sucrose export from the leaves of potato and tobacco as shown by antisense repression (Riesmeier et al.,
1994; Bürkle et al.,
1998). The
Arabidopsis homolog was called SUC2 and null mutation in SUC2 is lethal (Gottwald et al.,
2000). Two more distantly related sucrose transporter homologs SUT2 and SUT4 were functionally characterized in the yeast expression system and shown to also transport sucrose and maltose (Barker et al.,
2000; Weise et al.,
2000). All three transporters have been localized to enucleate sieve elements (Kühn et al.,
1997; Barker et al.,
2000; Weise et al.,
2000). A recent proteomic analysis identified the barley SUT4 homolog in the tonoplast membrane (Endler et al.,
2006). AtSUT4/SUC4-fusions also localize to the tonoplast (Schneider et al.,
2012) and contribute to export of sucrose from the vacuole (Schulz et al.,
2011). SUT2 and SUT4 are low affinity sucrose transporters in Solanaceae and
Arabidopsis. SUT2 is characterized by an extended central loop that contains conserved domains CCB1 and CCB2 (Lalonde et al.,
2004). In tomato, LeSUT1 and LeSUT2 inhibition affects tomato fruit development, while the potato SUT4 appears to be important for a variety of functions flowering, tuberization, and shade avoidance response (Hackel et al.,
2006; Chincinska et al.,
2008). In poplar, RNAi (RNA interference) inhibition of the SUT4 paralog PtaSUT4 has been shown to affect the leaf/stem biomass ratio, implicating the vacuolar sucrose transporter SUT4 in sucrose partitioning, and biomass allocation (Payyavula et al.,
2011). Such a evolutionary conserved role in biomass allocation is supported by similar findings in rice for the SUT4 family member OsSUT2 (which belongs to the SUT4 clade; Eom et al.,
2011). Note that the nomenclature of sucrose transporters in
Arabidopsis may differ. SUT1 and SUT3 are paralogs in tobacco (Lemoine et al.,
1999) the corresponding genes in
Arabidopsis are called SUC2 as well as SUC1, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. SUT2 has been called SUC3 and SUT4 has been called SUC4.
The genome of
Selaginella was analyzed for the occurrence of sucrose transporter homologs (Table ; Figure ; Figure S2 in Supplementary Material provides full tree; Table S1 in Supplementary Material). Close homologs were identified in
Physcomitrella; the haploid
Selaginella genome encodes five sucrose transporter genes. The
Selaginella SUT genes fall into two clades, SUT2 and a branch close, but clearly distinct from the SUT1 and SUT4-like clades found in higher plants (Lalonde et al.,
2004). One member falls into the SUT2 clade and was named SmSUT2L1-1 (the allele from the second haploid line was called SmSUT2L1-2), as well as four genes in the SUT1/SUT4 branch (here named SUT4L1, SUT4L2, SUT4L3, SUT4L4). This classification is supported by similarities in the intron structure and the presence of an extended central loop containing a conserved CCB2 domain in the
Selaginella and higher plant SUT2s (the CCB1 box is not conserved between
Selaginella and
Physcomitrella and all the other candidates containing this longer central loop). Monocots also do not have a SUT1 homolog, which is interesting since this transporter is essential for several dicots. Monocots have two types of SUT2, one with and one without a central loop. While it is conceivable that the mosses/spikemosses had lost one of the two. However, based on the distance to the higher plant SUT1 and SUT4 clades, it is more likely that this is an ancestral clade and that SUT1 and 4 evolved from this ancestral clade. We therefore named the clade moss SUT1/SUT4 clade.
Distant SUT homologs have been identified in fungi (Reinders and Ward,
2001). The
Schizosaccharomyces pombe homolog was shown to function primarily as a maltose transporter, but also can transport sucrose (Reinders and Ward,
2001). Homologs also exist in the animal kingdom, e.g., medaka and mouse, which are directly or indirectly involved in melanin accumulation (Fukamachi et al.,
2001). Interestingly, no SUT homologs have been found in green algae, while glucose transporters are well conserved in algae (Caspari et al.,
1994).
Despite the importance of trehalose for plants and its occurrence in
Selaginella, we have not found homologs of the insect-specific trehalose transporter family in
Selaginella or
Arabidopsis (Kikawada et al.,
2007; Kanamori et al.,
2010).